If there is such a thing as an embarrassment of riches, then Gordon Brown has it. Once again the chancellor's cautious forecasts for the public sector finances have been surpassed. Instead of having £11bn left in the kitty at the end of the financial year, as he predicted in last month's budget, he has a bumper £15bn. If it were anyone but Gordon, the question would be how quickly can he spend it.

However, we are in safe hands with Mr Brown. Having already pledged to use his £20bn windfall from the auction of new generation mobile phone licenses for paying down debt, Mr Brown is likely to be similarly hair-shirted about locking his latest bonus.

Above all the Treasury fears repeating the mistakes made by the previous government in the late 80s when it mistook a temporary surplus in the government's finances as a result of an unheathily booming economy, for a structural shift out of deficit. This time, however, most commentators agree that improvement in the fiscal position is real.

Mr Brown's team faces a dilemma. At this stage in the economic cycle, the chancellor cannot spend either the mobile phone windfall or run down his structural surplus without provoking the Bank of England into offsetting the boost to demand with higher borrowing costs.

But the sight of the Treasury revelling in loads of money does not fit well alongside the shabby state of Britain's public services. After decades of underinvestment - in everything from roads to public transport to schools and hospitals - even increases likely to be unveiled in this summer's second comprehensive spending review will not repair the tattered fabric of the public sector.

The one-off bonus of the mobile phone windfall should not be squandered on tax cuts or spending at the expense of higher interest rates. What is needed is some creative thinking about long-term investment ideas which will not immediately flood the economy with cash and force the Bank to retaliate with higher borrowing costs.

The £20bn is a serious amount of money. How to spend it deserves some serious consideration.

Top dogs

The latest set of figures by Caps, the fund performance measuring firm, are an intriguing read. For one thing, name and brand awareness, the speak of the market executives counts for little.

Fuji-Lord Abbett and Orbitex are not household names, but they vie for the top two slots with a return of close to 15% return during the first three months of the year. Languishing at the other end of the much-watched league table are better known firms such as Abbey Life, Britannic, Standard Life and more tellingly Phillips & Drew and Prudential, all of which produced negative returns for their investors.

True, it was a difficult period for many of the so-called "pooled mixed with property funds" with the median return for the sector at minus 0.4%, the slowest start to an investment year since 1994.

To be fair, this is better than the minus 3.4% return of the FTSE All Share index - often used as a benchmark by the major pension fund trustees - during the three month period. But it might be a source of alarm for the trustees, who make the crucial decision about which of the fund management firms should be entrusted with their precious assets, before the recent stock market rout which occurred outside the period of this latest table.

The list makes slightly better reading for the giant Mercury Asset Management, which is creeping back up the honours list, as is Schroders which last quarter got to within a whisker of its 10-year ranking of 16th.

About 65 funds are included in the rankings which show that it is the smallest funds which have produced the best returns. Nine out of the top 10 are investing less than £200m, peanuts in comparison with the £5bn or so the likes of Mercury has to handle. Orbitex, second last quarter but first over the past 12 months, claims to manage just £1m while Fuji, first last quarter, has £67m. For these funds, the telling time could come if the pension fund consultants start to recommend their funds because, as the old names found out to their peril five years ago, this is when the performance is hard to maintain.

Name calling

The embarrassing leak of a stock exchange memo, outlining how blame for a possible collapse in merger discussions with Deutsche Börse might be off-loaded on to the Germans has revived memories of a competition to find a name for the earlier plan to create a simple alliance between the two.

Two years ago when talks first got going, staff at the bourse in Frankfurt were offered the chance to win a weekend in London if they managed to think up the winning name. Likewise, staff in London were offered the chance to win a weekend in Frankfurt. And yes... no one in London bothered to enter the competition.